Irretrievable breakdown of marriage considered to be a ground to annul marriage

Delhi High Court: There was an appeal against the decision of the Family Court  which had dismissed the request for annulment of the marriage between the respondent and appellant on ground of desertion and cruelty by wife. The High Court reversed the order of Family Court and even noted that certain observations made by it were contrary to law. The wife had stated before the Court that her husband was more interested in other girls than in he and she had herself seen him with a girl to which he instead of explaining, had abused her without telling about the girl. Also, she had at several occasions received her husband’s phone from different girls.

To this allegation, response of the Family Court was that the husband must remove the suspicion from his wife’s mind and said that unchastity by a wife is to be viewed seriously because a higher level of fidelity is expected from a wife and it denied treating the allegation of infidelity made against the husband as mental torture. The Division Bench  expressed their shock at such a gender bias approach of the Family Court and made an important observation that an act of infidelity by either spouse would be treated on equal footing and amount to mental cruelty to other spouse. However, the facts of the case were such that the wife was unable to prove her allegations against her spouse.

In the present case, another important observation made by the Court relying on the facts was that the relations between husband and wife were more or less spoilt and they had reached the prime of their age. Also, they found out that there would be no good cause served by re-uniting them as the children were already major and could take care of themselves. It held that there was an irretrievable breakdown of marriage between both the parties in the case before them and granted the decree of divorce on the same ground while cruelty of one against the other was not sufficiently proved. However, there were serious allegations of both against each other indicating that compelling them to live with each other would in itself be an act of cruelty toward them. [Navratan Baid v. Neetu Baid, 2017 SCC OnLine Del 6884, decided on 6.02.2017]